authority; and there is no objection other than that of chauvinistic prejudice or of academic theory which could effectually prevent the creation of a United States of Europe on the same basis and a greatly extended United States of America as well. But it requires to be emphasised at this point that we need less a league of nations than a league of peoples; and if it be alleged that this is a distinction which implies no real difference, the answer must be made that the difference is indeed deep and vital. Sir Rabindranath Tagore has lately criticised the idea of the nation on the ground that it is the organisation of a people in the interests of its material welfare and power;[48] and insomuch as the nation finds its focus in the sovereign state, its effect is separative and divisive. A league of nations in the Western World would tend to be a league of states, of governments; and the psychological inheritance of such a league would tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes and policies rather than the broader matters of human intercourse. It is inconceivable that a league of nations will be able to divest itself from the characteristic stock-in-trade of the specialist in “foreign affairs,” since it would naturally be engineered by statesmen schooled in the traditional order. No league has any chance of permanence which does not break wholly with the current conventions of international business; and the only hope of such a break lies in the direct selection by the people of the various countries of their own representatives on the council of the league. The league must be democratically controlled; and that with as much direct democratic power as such expedients as proportional representation and recall can secure. The foreign offices of Europe are so incurably steeped in an evil tradition that the less they have to do with any future league the better. The secrecy, the intrigue, the diplomatic _finesse_ in which they have been expert are incongruous with the democratic principle; and it is necessary in the interest of international understanding that they should be put out of commission with all decent haste. The kind of domestic organisation for foreign business which a league of nations requires differs _toto coelo_ from the existing institution; and it will have to be built from the bottom up. Footnote 48: See _Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1917, p. 291.